UX Check is a Chrome Extension made by Chris Gallello that helps you identify usability issues through a heuristic evaluation (Nielsen’s 10 heuristics). And why do you want a Chrome extension for this? Convenience. Just click on an element and you’ll get a screenshot and a callout where you can write your notes. Once you’re done, export it as a HTML or DOCX file.

As a digital designer I like to store screenshots of websites, apps and other user interfaces that I use later for inspiration. I’ve been doing this for a few years and I have changed my setup a few times.

I started using Evernote to keep track of everything. Evernote was quite flexible and I liked how I could use folders and tags, and the built-in OCR was nice too, but I stopped using it because the process was just too manual and slow. I had to take a screenshot with Paparazzi, rename the file, import it in Evernote and then add all that metadata… too much work.

After that I started using Google Drive. The workflow was smoother because with Google Drive you can use a Chrome extension that uploads web screenshots with just one click, so that was nice! The problem is that using Google Drive as an image viewer is not that great: you can’t resize the thumbnails and the content takes forever to load. I had to find something better.

So, after trying a few desktop apps with little success, I decided to give Pinterest an opportunity. Yes, Pinterest is that social network where you go find pictures of cupcakes. But Pinterest is fast, it has a really handy Chrome extension and, if you follow the right people, it can help you find cool stuff too.

So now I’m on Pinterest. If you follow me, I’ll follow you… as long as you don’t pin pictures of cupcakes.

Recently Github Pages stopped supporting Textile as one of the markup languages you can use to author your Jekyll site. They left Markdown as the only option, which makes sense considering that Markdown is widely supported and way more popular than Textile. This blog was originally created using Textpattern and Textile and that’s why I had a bunch of posts written in Textile that I had to convert.

The Github crew just published this post explaining the conversion process. The outcome is not perfect and you will need to review your converted files, but at the end it didn’t take more than an hour or two to convert all those old blog posts.

A nice resource if you’re considering blogging with Jekyll. You’ll find an introduction guide, some tutorials and tips, templates and a list of third party services you can use to enhance or complement your blog.

I use Trello all the time, I think it’s by far my favorite digital tool. One of the things I love about Trello is the flexibility and how you can adjust it to your own workflow. This article is about how to use Trello while doing user research, an activity that I’ve been doing quite a bit lately.

This is the first in a series of five posts on running your own user research that I found at the Google Ventures blog. Great tutorials that include all the templates you could need when you do usability testing. And they also have a pretty useful 90-minute video!

I’m doing some usability testing at work and I just discovered that Silverback, the screen capture software I used before, doesn’t work anymore in my new Macbook. Looking for an alternative I found Lookback. It’s simple, multi-platform (Mac, iOS and Android), and it uploads your recordings to the cloud so you can share them with the rest of your team.